The Invisible Man Finds His Voice
The Invisible Man’s speech in chapter 13 stood out to me because I think this was a critical point in the novel in which the Invisible Man finally finds his voice. He realizes after eating the yams, which remind him of the South, that he cannot sit back and observe injustice. As he looks at the crowd of people gathered to watch the eviction, the white men dragging household furnishings out of the apartment, and the old black woman who remains sitting on a chair crying, the narrator realizes that if he does not do something, no one will. This “finding of his voice” is what ultimately leads him to join the brotherhood and start delivering speeches for racial equality and so this spontaneous and heated speech is what I consider to the turning point in the novel.
I agree that the eating of the yams was a crucial part of the story. And it was a part that definitely makes the reader happy for the invisible man- finally catching a break after all of the hardships he has gone through. But this break only turned to furthering confusion as the invisible man went on to be a spokesman figure head for an all white brotherhood (being used again).